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POLITICO 44

Wall Street has a new headache to deal with on Capitol Hill, and, for once, it’s not about bailouts or bonuses — at least not of the cash variety — although it may be about influence.

News reports that Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup had gotten their own private stash of swine flu vaccine sent Congress into a tizzy last week.

Now, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) has called a hearing to examine how those pesky bankers got the scarce vaccine before the people who health experts say really need it.

And the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a freedom-of-information request with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding documentation to explain why Wall Street beat out at-risk people such as schoolchildren and pregnant women.

But perhaps the worst fallout, from Wall Street’s perspective, is the public relations one, as painfully illustrated on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, when Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler pounced on the story for their “Really!?!” segment.

“Really, Goldman Sachs, really? ... Do you know that you have a serious PR problem?” asked Meyers, questioning the wisdom of the firm’s taking a batch of H1N1 vaccine before schools and hospitals got it.

“I know that, to you guys, swine flu is almost as terrifying as drinking tap water or sending your kids to public school, but really?” he continued.

But it was Poehler who hit the nail on the head when she said Wall Street was “making it way too easy, guys, really.”

Wall Street POLITICO is a weekly column looking at issues that drive business.

So our children and the elderly can't get flu shots - not enough vaccine. But Wall Street which just got bailed out by the generous Obama administration with the expectation that they will be generously rewarded in return - they got their own stash of vaccine. Hey, even the terrorists down in Guantanamo are all getting flu shots ahead of our own children. You folks want a preview of Obama-care? This is it. Medical shortages everywhere except among the elite in-groups and the groups who hate America the most.

At a hearing this morning before Senator Dodd and the Health Education Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families, the Senator stated that he received a note with a message from the Mayor of New York City explaining that the approximately two-hundred doses of H1N1 received by Goldman Sachs was proportional to the number of GS employees who were pregnant. Really, Mr. Mayor? Thank you for sharing that with us.